Part Hipster, Part Huckster, Modell Delivers The Goods

104 Years Of Nfl Leadership

TAMPA, Fla. — Art Modell has a million of 'em. A million stories about the way things used to be in the NFL.

``We [the owners] were all competitive. We tried to beat each other's brains out every Sunday,'' he says. ``But the rest of the week, we were partners.''

There was a day when Modell tried to steal one of his favorites, Father Dudley, away from the Giants to be his team's chaplain. When Jack Mara, then one of the Giants co-owners, objected, Modell turned to Father Dudley and demanded, ``Pray out your option.''

Once, an angry Modell, after hitting his flask ``to take the chill out of the air,'' banged on the door of the officials' room in Pittsburgh to protest the ejection of one of his players. Referee Ben Drieth warned it was a $10,000 fine if he walked in. And Modell said, ``Ben, would you come out for $5,000?''

GM Ozzie Newsome, who has been with Modell as a player, coach and executive since 1978, has heard them all.

``And I still laugh at them,'' Newsome says. ``That man has an unreal sense of humor.''

Modell is affable. Modell is charming. Modell is called ``genuine'' by his longtime employees, and considered, by some, loyal to a fault. Yet he's the one who took the Browns to Baltimore in 1996, clad them in purple and rechristened them the Ravens, deserting some of the most loyal, passionate fans in all of sports.

Modell, 75, is in the Super Bowl for the first time. Yet he has had to spend much of the week defending himself and his legacy.

``I think the logical people [in Cleveland] would say, `What do we want?''' Modell said. ``We have the Browns, we have a team playing in a new stadium, we have the legacy of Jim Brown, of Marion Motley.''

But from this corner, there is no story about the good old days, no one-liner. A former advertising man, Modell has spent a lifetime being liked ... winning people over. From a family that lost all it had in the Great Depression, Modell became a sports and entertainment mogul on the strength of his foresight and his powers of persuasion. But he cannot seem to get everyone to see this his way.

Modell's legacy is a complicated tapestry, with threads of right, wrong and reality interwoven. Arguably, this franchise would not be in this Super Bowl had Modell not moved it to Baltimore when he did.

``I think in large part, there's an ignorance to what was going on,'' said kicker Matt Stover, who has worked for Modell since 1991. ``I know [the vilification] hurt him, I could see it in the look on his face. And I know his move hurt Cleveland. But I'm sure it was the hardest thing he has ever done. If he had stayed in Cleveland, playing in Municipal Stadium, it would have crippled him. Don't forget, he is one of the last owners who doesn't own any other business. He didn't have the ways to generate money that other teams have.''

In one of his group interviews this week, Modell said he wants to be known as a ``survivor,'' and he wants his family to survive in the NFL after he is gone, something estate taxes may make impossible. In Cleveland in 1995, just as he did in the 1960s -- when he urged the NFL to build a relationship with television -- this survivor looked into the future and correctly assessed its wave. In the last two seasons, three of the teams that relocated in the mid-1990s -- the Rams, Titans and Ravens -- have reached the Super Bowl. Modell calls the NFL salary cap ``the best thing that's ever happened to the league,'' but the ability to spend and the ability to win are connected as surely as they are in baseball.

Without the revenue resulting from a new stadium and its luxury suites, a favorable lease, big shares of the concessions and parking dollars, and a lesser tax burden, an NFL team does not have the cash on hand to deliver signing bonuses. That's how free agents are lured, that's what gets players to rework long-term contracts to create room under the cap. The Ravens, like the Rams and Titans, have the wherewithal. Now.

To end the firestorm over the relocation of the Browns, the NFL agreed to place an expansion team in Cleveland, which agreed to build a stadium. Modell agreed to let go of the name, the colors, the records, so that the new Browns, who began play in 1999, could be presented to Cleveland as a continuation of the old.

But bygones are not yet bygones. When Browns legend Lou Groza died last fall, Modell, a close friend, did not go to the funeral in Cleveland. ``I didn't want to be a distraction there,'' he said, sadly.

Modell, in his 40 years in the NFL, has been a lifeline connecting the old and the new. When he bought the Browns for $3.9 million in March 1961, he joined a group of aging men who had started franchises for a few dollars and, having made a modest success of the NFL, planned to pass them on to their children. The Giants, for instance, were formed for $500 by Tim Mara in 1925 and were, by '61, controlled by his sons.